2-day Work Week

So, while working for a small office has its perks, it also has its downsides too. When your boss goes on vacation, the office goes on vacation. We're closed on Wednesdays anyways, he leaves on Thursday. Tomorrow is my Friday! The weather looks like it will be nice Wednesday. Maybe I'll get out and get some pictures taken.

Mom and I are going to the lake on Thursday to visit my grandparents. They are going to take us to the church that my great-grandfather preached at. I'm really looking forward to it. I'll update later this week.

Scrapbook Pages

Not much to say here. I have added some of the pages I did at the scrapbook retreat in January. Now only if I could figure out how to photograph my layouts so they look right.

Jeremy and I always joke about our age difference (7 years). So this layout has various different facts from each of our birth years. Some of the facts: 1977 - cost of a stamp was $.13 compared to $.22 in 1985; "Star Wars" was released in 1977 and "Back to the Future" was released in 1985; Average price of a car in 1977 was $5,814 and in 1985 was $11,902

I took pictures of some of the food we served at Christmas with my mom's side of the family. The journaling next to the dressing reads: " Grandmother's Dressing - Grandmother was Papa's Mother. She was a great cook. Owned a cafe in Mabank, TX around the 1940's & 50's. Grandmother made the best dressing. It had enough pepper, sage and raisins to give it flavor. She mixed it in a very large metal mixing bowl."

Sadie and Shelby are sisters. They were born 03/03/03 in Jeremy's backyard. They are complete opposites.

These were taken at Audubon Park in Garland.

This is Jeremy's "sweet" neice, Layla. I love this picture of her. She was playing in the sprinklers in the backyard and came up and wanted me to take her picture. And then of course, she had to look at it.

This is from that same afternoon of Layla playing in the sprinkler. It wasn't near warm enough for me to be in my swimsuit, I think that is a sign of getting older.

This is my darling Sophie. Okay, some days she isn't so "darling". She's kind of like a baby, so sweet when she's sleeping.

Layla's 2nd Birthday. Just an FYI the "2" collage at the bottom was an AMAZING thing from the cricut, but also a PAIN to glue to the page.

Super Sunday

After taking the afternoon off on Friday, I had a pretty relaxing weekend. I woke up this morning and decided to try the Aboretum again. I got there before the gates opened, and there were probably 30-40 people in line. It was a pretty successful trip, it got a little crowded once I made my way through all the gardens. Here are some pictures from this morning...

My favorite of the day:

Ok, so two of my favorites (I only took like 150 shots):

What A Bust

I had great plans for today. I was going to:

• Go to the grocery store
• Clean the apartment
• Do the laundry
• Give Sophie a bath
• Go to the Dallas Aboretum and take pictures

That didn't happen. I got up and went to the grocery store. I guess Target opens at 9 (I thought it was 8). Target is really quiet in the mornings. They don't play music, but when there are more than 5 customers in the store, I guess it is pretty loud and I've never noticed that till today. After the grocery store, the plan was to run by Kim's work for 2 seconds, go wash the car and head to the Arboretum. I went to the car wash, the change machine was out of quarters. Boo! Went to Kim's work, dropped off her jacket. By this time it is 10:30. If I were to wash my car, it would then be lunch time and I wasn't about to go take pictures for a couple of hours and be starving. So I called Jeremy, we went to Freebirds. It was GREAT! I love being able to meet him for lunch. Then I headed to my destination! I get to the entrance and it is closed. Police are directing traffic to the Shuttle Location. I get to the parking lot for the shuttle bus, and two (probably 54-seater) charter buses are in the parking lot and nearly 200!! people in line to get on these two buses!!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?! Even if I waited to get inside the gardens, there would be people all in my pictures. I have this wonderful idea to take black and white pictures of tulips, greenery, the tunnel of pink trees (the name escapes me), the house on the property...and framing them to hang in my house somewhere. Well that and I need the practice. Dumb Spring Breakers and their parents idea for a "stay-cation". Maybe next week. So that being said, no pictures today.

On a side note, Sophie does not like birds chirping in the early morning hours. One chirpped this morning and she hopped up and growled and did her little low bark. It is really strange how protective she is. Jeremy sleep walked to the couch the other night and slept there for a couple of hours. She woke up when he left and then I finally got her to fall back asleep. When he came back to bed, she did the same thing. She didn't know who it was walking back into the bedroom. I guess it is a good thing, she might not be able to physically protect us, but at least she can warn us. She's a good dog. I took her for a walk tonight. Poor dog, some weeks she never sees the outside world. I'm gonna work on that though. Everyone that we pass stops and makes a comment about how cute she is. One lady tonight though, was a little odd. She kept telling her grandsons not to put their hand out there because she might be a dog that will nip you. SERIOUSLY? Don't you think if I thought she was going to nip you I wouldn't allow her to come in contact with you? But that is a good way to teach her grandsons the proper way to meet strange dogs.

Have a great week! Maybe I'll take some pictures this weekend.

Daylight Savings Time??

So Saturday night we "sprung forward" and boy was Sunday a beautiful day for Daylight Savings Time. Jeremy and I went to Kellers on Northwest Hwy. Who knew that we would visit a place that Dad used to take us to when we were kids? I don't know how Kellers survives, any stranger driving down the street would have to be crazy to stop. But that place is just as popular today as it was 20 years ago. I even ran across an ad on craigslist that mentioned a lady who had worked there since 1978! I don't even know if Kellers has been around that long! Anyways, after lunch at Kellers with the top down, we went to my parents house to hang out. We ended up "supervising" Kelley while she cleaned her truck up in order to sell it. That is the cleanest that truck has been since she got it!

Work was work today. Nothing too exciting. I'm now home, waiting for dinner to be ready. No pictures today, just a boring post. :)

Time Flies...

Well, needless to say 2009 has come! It also came in with a splash! A lot has happened in the first couple of months of this year. Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to here. This will be long I'm sure.

We rang in 2009 with great friends. We also helped celebrate a wonderful friend of mine get hitched. Congrats again!

We spent the night at Lauren's parents the night before the wedding. Saturday we woke up without alarms, we casually went to breakfast at Hubbard's in Rowlett. It was great. From there we headed to the church to get ready. Jeremy met my mom and sister at home to ride together to the church and reception. To allow my mom to have a margarita or two, Jeremy drove her and my sister home and I was going to meet him at the apartment. He called me when he got to the apartment and the conversation went something like this:

J: Sophie is out.

S: Well maybe the bathroom door didn't fully shut and the cats pushed it open.

J: But there are wet footprints in the hallway.

S: Well is anything missing or messed up?

J: I don't know, I came back downstairs.

S: Well we can call the Richardson police and they'll enter the apartment and check it out.

Jeremy decided he would call his friend with the police department to see if he was working. About that time, the carpet cleaner guy showed up. Come to find out, the toilet overflowed, YET AGAIN! But this time for about 7 hours. It leaked through the floor to our downstairs neighbor. She called maintenance and they came in the apartment to shut off the water. The carpet guy was there till about 1am. He had to suck out all the water, cut the carpet, pull it back, and remove the padding underneath. The best part: I hadn't gone to the bathroom once I put on my bridesmaid's dress at about 3:30pm. Figuring I would just use the restroom when I got home after the wedding! Sophie was sopping wet, she got a bath and we were in bed by 2am, I think.

The next weekend, for an early birthday present, I went on a 4-day scrapbooking retreat. I got TONS of stuff done!!! Thanks Mom! I had a great time and can't wait till we can go again.

February 7th, another new friend of mine got married to an old friend of mine. Congrats Val and Daniel.

Little did we know that we would get wet again. My mom came over and I helped her with her taxes! WHO KNEW?!?! Okay, I just made a spread sheet. While she was here, we cleaned. She's amazing and cleaned the fireplace! We noticed the washing machine was leaking a little and the "self-adjusting legs" were no longer self adjusting. So we pulled the washer out, tilted it, looked underneath and didn't find a leak. I did fix the legs, so now it doesn't sounds like a rocket ship taking off and I can do laundry whenever without driving my downstairs neighbor lady crazy. I didn't do any more laundry that day or for the next week. That brings us to Saturday, Valentine's Day. The plan (since I always wake up before Jeremy): put together his gift, clean a little, make chocolate covered strawberries, make heart shaped pancakes. Well, since my washer is no longer a rocket ship, I started a load of laundry and went to make the strawberries. Then I hear this noise, it sounds like someone turned on a water hose FULL BLAST! And low-and-behold if water doesn't start flowing from the washer. Now, it would have been real easy if the drain hose had just come out of the wall and I could just put it back and little water would have been lost. NOPE! The drain hose came off at the bottom of the washer. Let me just tell you, water travels fast on tiled floors and in a laundry room with just enough room for the washer and dryer, well its not so easy to pull it from the wall to put it back together. I've been real cautious about doing laundry ever since.

Oh, it is still Valentine's Day! And since I had had a rough morning, Jeremy decided he would take me to breakfast. Well on Valentine's Day where do people go for breakfast, but IHOP! We tried two IHOP's where the wait was 30 minutes. We finally made it to a Denny's. It was 11 o'clock. From there we went to Autorama at Dallas Market Hall. Then I made fajitas for dinner. All in all it was an okay day.

2 weeks later: My Birthday!

I had to work (Oh work! Next paragraph). I got to work, Lisha was decorating the office with banners, posters, and a balloon. She also brought me breakfast from McDonalds. For lunch, my co-workers took me to California Pizza Kitchen. It was great! They also brought over a cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory. Later in the afternoon, they gave me a card and a candy bar. I couldn't ask for better co-workers. After work, my parents took me and Jeremy to dinner. It was a GREAT birthday!!!

Oh, I GOT A JOB!!! A wonderful, amazing, beautiful, intellegent sorority sister of mine called me up and asked if I wanted to come work with her. Of course, after being unemployed and continuously searching and applying for nearly 3 months, I jumped at the offer. Oh, and I guess the fact that I would get to work with her was another added benefit. I couldn't be more blessed to have a job right now.

Well, that's been my life since 2009 has begun. We are looking forward to the rest of the year. We have major plans to purchase a house and take advantage of the First Homebuyer Tax Credit. I'll try to keep this updated more often then every 3 months.